The most prominent single picture throughout human history is men at war. Fighting for power or simply to defend, the male body has been at the disposal of the communityâs interests. In societies that have experienced conflict men have historically soothed fear, provided protection and continued to fight others. In Cyprus, farmers became militia to fight the British Empire. This was for the cause of independence. Today the conflict is entangled with two ethnic-mothers, in masculine competition with each other over territorial dominance. The modern history of Cyprus has been one of a tormented child yet to develop its own identity. The armed guerrillas of the Greek Cypriot (GC) National Organization of Cypriot Fighters (EOKA) and the Turkish Cypriot (TC) Turkish Resistance Organization (TMT) fought for their communities until these were ethnically divided by the Green Line. As the Green Line transformed into the Attila Line, with the 1974 Turkish invasion of Northern Cyprus, they transformed into standing armies, protecting their communities from each other across the border 1 dividing Cyprus up to the present day into two artificial monoethnic areas. Across the whole divide, the border is guarded by soldiers in outposts, with two soldiers in each (one in the northern and one in the southern part). In between, there is the no-manâs land (the Green Line), which is filled with explosive mines. After 1974 no âinter-ethnicâ contact was possible. One could not cross, call or post to the âother sideâ. The border was uncrossable.
Men serve military conscription against the âenemyâ from both sides of the border, whilst across Cyprus the hope is that one day a solution will bring the border down. For now, Cyprus stands as one of the most militarized countries in the world, as the Global Militarization Index makes clear every year. The Republic of Cyprus (RoC) maintains the longest conscription service in the European Union (EU). Since I was a child, it concerned me that I too would have to be a soldier. Coming from a family involved in developing the peace movement, it was difficult for me to find a position in the conflict politics, which by extension would have translated into what type of man I would be. The position promoted by the state wanted me to be a male defender against Turkey, which is âbarbaricâ and âunjustâ. My familyâs social circles supported the idea that I should stand against these male ideals and be the emotional man striving for understanding the âotherâ (Said 1978), whilst reflecting on âourâ responsibility in the conflict. I was juggling all these identities with their accounts of whose fault the Cyprus problem is and the type of man I should be. Meanwhile, what lay across the border was already in our living room talking with my parents, who had TC friends, at a time when only a few lived across the heavily militarized uncrossable border. I thus did not have the distance necessary to become afraid of, or create a sense of identity in relation to, the âotherâ (Hall 1992).
Moreover, the border also possessed little power in my imagination (Anderson 1983), because I had spent endless hours in the grounds of the Lydra Palace hotel, in the buffer zone, playing with United Nations (UN) soldiers from all over the world, whilst my parents took part in Greek and Turkish Cypriot bi-communal meetings which took place on the neutral UN territory. Moreover, I couldnât really feel the protests against the British troops in Cyprus, as my mother worked at the junior school that was created for the children of British high-ranking officers during the colonization era.
I remember feeling excited at events when looking up in the sky demonstrations by the UK Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team (Red Arrows) and later in the year watching the Cyprus National Guard parade through Nicosia, whilst soldiers of the Hellenic Force in Cyprus strolled through the city on their day off. In the background, on the other side of the border, was the âoccupation army threatening our existenceâ. I remember such stories as a child, said on the TV, of guards becoming friendly as they guard the different sides of the border, sometimes to the point of offering each other cigarettes, and then when the GC guard would cross the border to get the friendly cigarette, they would get shot. Every so often I would hear TV reports about the occupation army killing a GC soldier on the border. With all these armies, soldiers and demonstrations blending into the tranquil everyday rhythm of Cyprus, it took me years to understand how they were in fact a complex nexus of militarism.
Masculinity, moreover, was a tormenting point of identity between home and school. Specifically, I remember, on a Sunday, passing with my parents through a village, the birthplace of many anti-colonial heroes, and hearing my parents criticizing the monuments erected in the stone-built squares. I became angry and began defending heroism , a value we were learning in junior school. It was through this rupture between home and school that I began to essentially question the masculinity promoted in both these areas.
The obligation to participate in military service was particularly difficult as I would have had to reconcile these two oppositional identity pillars. How could I appeal to the military idea that my parents despised and yet how could I not, given that it was a male expectation of the society in which I was growing up? Therefore, I used to wish that the solution would come before the letter from the army stating that I was to enlist.
However, my hope for a solution to the long-drawn-out conflict transformed into a camouflaged uniform. I too was matched with the number of a military rifle that was to be mine. Yet, I was called into training to be a soldier straight after the borders were opened between the North and the South in 2003, allowing free movement for the first time since 1974. As I was walking through the gate of the camp, there was much hope for reconciliation between the two Cypriot communities. My childhood imagination was again revived when I was given leave from my barracks to vote in the referendum on the Annan Plan, the only referendum conducted on reunifying the island, in 2004. If the Plan had been voted throughâwe would have been released from the army and our officers would have become firemen and policemen. Ethnic armies would have been dissolved in this very last act, staged as the disappearing act, of a play where we needed to guard ourselves from each other. A federation would have emerged, unifying the two sides in one.
Wearing the camouflage to continue to defend, there was no hope left that history would release me from my male duties. My military leave expired, with the GC (76%) rejection of the Plan (which was approved by 65% of TCs). As disappointing as this was, the only thing invigorating my hope was I was to âbecome Europeanâ. Of course, this was strange too, as after the referendum only half the island 2 was now officially in the EU (being admitted in 2004) and in the blink of an eye, TCs felt further away from âusâ than ever before. 3 Therefore, instead of a unified country, with a dissolved National Guard, âweâ became one of the few EU countries that maintain military service.
My military service was turning out to be an important period for Cyprus, and yet I was back in the barracks for good. Therefore, as I continued why we were assigned these male duties, one day I suggested the following to my captain: âIs it not realistically useless that a Greek Cypriot army even exists? In the case of war, we will be fighting Turkey; one of the strongest military powers in the world! Also, it is even worse if we try to resist and not surrender as people will die and we are going to lose regardless.â His answer was revealing: âStratis, if you are walking with your girlfriend in the street and another man bigger than you comes and disturbs your girlfriend, are you not going to do anything because he is bigger than you? Or are you going to stand on your feet as a man and protect your girlfriend?â
In this anecdote, my captain justified the existence of the military in the RoC. The aggressor, the physically strong man who is bigger than the boyfriend, represents Turkey, and the weaker man, who is the protector, represents the GC army. The latter will, even if it is much weaker than the Turkish army, protect the powerless girlfriend, who is here used as a voiceless symbol of post-1974 Cyprus, which is itself conceived as feminine and in need of protection. It was this anecdote that aroused my curiosity about possible links between nationalism, militarism and masculinity. This was the nationalist, militarist, masculinist stance that wanted us to remain vigilant after the invasion 4 in relation to a much bigger power able to split my country in two and create the border. Was this supposed to inspire our masculine role now that we could cross the border? Were we supposed to still feel vigilant to defend when the border is open? How about when âthe enemy crossingâ the border âshould we still hold firm? As Turkey is unlikely to invade the border, which is now a European border, should we still train in the barracks to defend? Would we still need to stand on our âmale feetâ against a bigger power after one in four GCs officially declared in the Annan Plan referendum that they wished to make peace with the âenemyâ? Is the GC community still afraid and in need of our defence?
The captain asserted his argument with machismo, yet during this time, I observed that with all these political events taking place around us, some of my fellow soldiers had begun to question their commitment to military service. After I was discharged from the army, I began noticing that the centrality of the defence sector in the GC political discourse 5 was becoming undermined while draft-dodging conscription was becoming an exponential phenomenon. Such observations seemed to be concerning greatly the wider society. Perhaps the captainâs argument was no longer so believable? Or indeed, perhaps the oppositeâthe public anxietyâmeant that his argument was still valid?
I became curious to understand how it was possible to simultaneously have the masculinist discourse of my captain and a declining political discourse on militarism. In the post-conflict context, how could the desire to protect âpowerless Cyprusâ from the âTurkish threatâ be decreasing amongst political leadership and âproperâ GC men? In the following discussion, we will see that, when looking at nationalism, militarism or masculinity in a post-conflict society, we need to always address the way in which there is a threefold relationship. This may show a national struggle emerging with pride or one that is being forgotten. As nationalism, militarism ...